George Brown Mair was born at Troon in Scotland in May, 1914 and was educated at Kilmarnock Academy and Glasgow University, where he qualified as a doctor. He visited most European countries, Asia from Japan to Turkey, South America, the West Indies, Canada, the United States, and parts of Africa. With his Dutch wife Trudie, he visited nearly all the Communist countries in Europe, during the course of which they were the first to photograph the interior of the Kremlin palaces and met many Soviet leaders.